MTC is different from current communication models as it involves new or different market scenarios. Potentially it involves very large number of communicating entities (MTC devices) with little traffic per device. Examples of such applications include: fleet management, smart metering, home automation, e-health, etc. Many different MTC devices may operate in the same location using a variety of radio access technologies on many different radio frequencies.
Studies of MTC have indicated great potential for such communications over mobile networks. The ubiquitous coverage of mobile networks is one main enabler.
However, to fully support these service requirements, it is necessary to improve efficiency in radio access networks to handle machine-type communications. Efforts have already been made in this direction, and the 3GPP Technical Report TR 23.888 “System Improvements for Machine-Type Communications”, hereby incorporated by reference, summarises an agreed architectural baseline for MTC services provided by a 3GPP wireless communication system.
An important consideration in improving efficiency is the use of multiple radio frequency bands in the most efficient way to handle both short range local communications links and wide area links via cellular networks.
As the number of devices in a given geographical area increases, the problem of radio interference between devices will increase. Typically, in one geographical area there will be many devices using radio communication information both on short range (<100 m) links and using cellular wide area networks (typically >100 m).
Typical scenarios where the number of devices will be seen to be increasing includes “smart cities” where many devices are deployed in the environment for transportation, environmental monitoring, etc. using both short range and long range communications networks.
Another environment where many devices could be deployed in close proximity is in the home, where many devices use radio connections for the transfer of sensor data, health related data, personal information and general communications (WiFi and voice), etc. The expression “geographical area” is thus to be interpreted broadly. It could include, for example, a single house or office building.
There are several different scenarios where interference mitigation would be beneficial including:                (i) Interference between devices operating on the same band (e.g. the ISM band at 2.4 GHz) with either:                    the same radio access technology; or            different radio access technologies                        (ii) Interference between devices operating in different frequency bands (but still causing mutual interference caused by receiver and/or transmitter non-linearity).        
The management of interference can generally take two forms:                (a) Passive interference management: this is where one device monitors for interference and operates in a way to avoid any potential problems.        (b) Active interference management: where one device can communicate to other devices information relating to interference, which can be used by other devices to avoid potential problems.        
However, such management is generally confined to a single radio access network (RAN) as explained below. In the above-mentioned scenarios, there is a need to improve existing interference and co-existence schemes to avoid potential conflicts across diverse systems.